Modernizing the Copyright Office 49
An anonymous reader writes: Joshua Simmons has written a new article discussing the growing consensus that it is time to modernize the Copyright Office. It reviews the developments that led to the last major revision of the Copyright Act; discusses Congress's focus since 1976 on narrower copyright bills, rather than a wholesale revision of U.S. copyright law, and the developments that have led to the review hearings; and considers the growing focus on Copyright Office modernization.
Pfft! (Score:2)
Just roll it back to its original 17 years. I want my Steamboat Willie!
Re:Pfft! (Score:5, Informative)
Roll it to 17 years, with no renewal.
Toss the automatic copyright and go back to requiring registration to get the copyright.
Require all software applying for copyright protection include all source code!
When copyright runs out on software, it is the source code and the compiled work that gets released to the Public Domain.
Take anything over 25 years old and make it public domain.
Require any court cases dealing with violation of copyright to have the plaintiff pay all legal fees should the case be found for the diffident.
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I wish... but the issue simply isn't important enough to enough people to make a difference.
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Require any court cases dealing with violation of copyright to have the plaintiff pay all legal fees should the case be found for the diffident.
Whoops! That no. The little guys would get screwed by that in a hurry. Deep pockets would win that every time.
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A compromise on the length argument is a registration fee, that is exponential. So, having copyright for a year might be a buck or two. Having it for 5 years might be a few hundred. Having it for 10 might be a few million. Having it for 15 might start to go into the billions range. That can obviously be tuned and tweaked. The point is that copyright is a public sacrifice and should be done for public benefit. Companies can decide how valuable that renewal is and let it go or buy in.
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Roll it back to 60 years after the publication date, with no provision for the life of the author, which is somewhat less generous to authors than the original Copyright Act of 1976. As a practical matter (in order to pass Congress) there would have to be a transition period of about 10 years to give owners of works that are losing protection a last chance to make gobs of money from their properties.
At the risk of sounding like Bill Gates, 60 years ought to be enough for anybody. (Without the transition p
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Also, what is this "hard work" you speak of? Maybe you should switch to some work you find easier to do, and let people who find the type of work you are doing now easy, take over.
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Berne Convention (Score:2)
They should take into account that copyright is assigned automatically under the Berne Convention and any registration functions the Copyright Office performs are redundant. Even in cases of legal dispute, the first person to have registered the copyright on a particular work might not have been the first person to actually create it, so it's of limited value there too.
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This is just some PR flack's attempt to pretend there is grassroots support for the letting the TPP gut what few copyright protections the U.S. still has left that favor the independent inventor over corporate behemoths.
I think you might be confusing patents with copyrights there buddy, they're a very different animal.
And I mean the other side of the debate is that long term ownership of particular copyrighted works stops exactly nobody from creating their own copyrighted works. This comment for example, is owned by me, copyright is automatically assigned. There's even some boilerplate above stating exactly as much. My comment may have zero financial value but I can still claim the same remedies as Disney should someone in
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That makes it a derivative work
No, and this is well established in copyright law. You can write a story with elves, orcs, goblins, trolls and so on and the Tokien estate can't come after you. Many have. In fact there's a whole movie sub-industry that is built on skirting as close to legal infringement as possible, and it's not going anywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Further the person who takes a photograph of a famous painting owns copyright on that photograph. The creator of an audiobook owns copyrights on that audiobook, alth
Copyright Office (Score:2)
Better registration? U.S. price raised $35 to $55. (Score:2)
Also, the U.S. Copyright Office [copyright.gov] takes months to respond, makes frequent mistakes, and has a web site that is in some ways poorly written.
Can you recommend a copyright office in another country?
I'm sorry to inform you... (Score:1)
Embarrassment galore! (Score:2)
Folks: the Copyright Office has no enforcement powers. All it is is a repository for registrations of claims of copyrights. Modernizing the copyright office is like modernizing the drivers license division of a state: it doesn't affect who is allowed to drive (assuming that it performs competently either way.) It is not the DL division that enforces the driving laws, it is the police and the courts. Same thing for the Copyright Office; a registration improves a plaintiff's claim, but that claim still has to
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It would seem to me that, this being the case, the Government would also have to compensate everyone effected by the retroactive extension of copyright terms.
Earlier expiration (Score:1)